In France, as the old saying has it, plus ca change, et plus c'est lameme chose. The fierce debates aroused by President Francois Mitterrand's bold decision to have the vast forecourt of the Louvre embellished by a seventy-foot-high pyramid made of metal wiring and glass are only the latest episode in a long series of intellectual battles between (the) ancients and (the) moderns.
These battles really began in the early seventeenth century with a furious controversy among Parisians as to whether sonnets should be composed in Alexandrine or octosyllabic verses, and was perpetuated by Victor Hugo and the Romantics with the uproar over his convention defying play, Hernani; by the admirers of Richard Wagner against the outraged whistlers and cat-calling enemies of Tannhauser (1861); and which rose to a new crescendo toward the end of the last century with the erection of that metallic "monstrosity," the Eiffel Tower.
The latest uproar, aroused by the French president's decision to have the last for ecourt6 of the Louvre enlivened by the erection of a "transparent" pyramid, should be of particular interest to sociologists for reasons that have little to do with aesthetics or the "science" of museumology. In the first place, Francois Mitterrand's achievement offers a classic example of how, in a country priding itself on its republican principles and addiction to democracy, a decision of this kind can be imposed by quasi-monarchical fiat; secondly, it offers a no less classic example of how a clever politician, by appealing to avant-garde snobbery as well as to venerable tradition, can manipulate public opinion and get it to approve the intimate "cohabitation" and "marriage" of sharply contrasted--not to say, antagonistic--styles.
Primary Destination
When, on September 24, 1981, at the conclusion of an Elysee Palace press conference, Francois Mitterrand solemnly declared, "I have decided to return the Louvre to its primary destination as a museum, " it was understood that he was serving notice on top officials of the Ministry of Finance, who for the past hundred years had been able to ensconce themselves and their files in the sumptuously gilt panelled apartments lining one side of the Rue de Rivoli.
What no one, except perhaps for a few Elysee Palace insiders, realized was the modernist twist that President Mitterrand was determined to give to this enterprise of not just expelling the Ministry of Finance, but the highly arbitrary manner in which he was going to go about creating "le plus grand museedu monde" - the greatest, the grandest museum in the world.
Many fondly expected that a new competition for the most suitable design would be held, like the one that had been organized prior to the construction of the Georges Pompidou Center and which had attracted no less than 681 entries. But nothing of the sort occurred. The months passed, no announcements were made, and it began to look as though the stubbornness of the well-entrenched financial bureaucracy had gotten the better of good intentions. But then, during the autumn and early winter of 1983, it began to be rumored that, unguided by anything more than his superior instinct for the Great and Beautiful--had he not onc ewritten a book entitled L'abeille et l'architecte (The Bee and Architect)? --Francois Mitterrand had decided to entrust the redesigning of the Louvre to an
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